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So how would the Alternative Voting system make a difference in the eastern counties?

As campaigning gets under way in the region it's a reasonable question to ask. The honest answer is that at the moment no one knows.

Opinion polls are divided, suggesting majorities for both the "yes" and "no" camps depending on the way the question is asked.

With no data on previous voting under this system, it's hard to predict how people would list their preferences.

Let's deal first with what we can be clear about: if approved by a majority of voters in May, AV would be a radical change in the way we elect our representatives.

Instead of putting a cross next to a name we would have to list candidates in order of preference.

If a candidate gets enough first preference votes to give him more than 50% of the vote, he or she wins. If not, the candidate who came last drops out and their second preference votes are redistributed among the other candidates.

That process continues until someone has the support of more than 50% of the electorate.

Another thing we can be sure of is that under AV, election counts will go on much longer!

So would it change the political make up of the region? Almost certainly, but perhaps not as dramatically as in other parts of the country.

Many of our MPs were elected with more than, or just under, 50% of the vote under the current first-past-the-post system. They would be likely to hold their seats under AV.

But what about seats where the margin of victory was much smaller?

This is where we suspend the facts and do a bit of speculating.

The Politics Show East did some back-of-the-envelope calculations last year and re-fought the .

Completely unscientific, admittedly, but there might be a kernel of truth somewhere in this exercise.

We presumed for the purposes of our experiment that UK Independence Party voters would have the Conservatives as a second preference; that Green supporters might divide between Labour and the Lib Dems for their second choice and that many Lib Dems might chose Labour second. We also assumed that Labour voters would opt for the Lib Dems as their number two.

The result, we speculated, would have been different outcomes in 11 seats.

Labour may have held on in Corby, Ipswich, both Milton Keynes seats and both Northampton seats.

Stevenage and Waveney may have also stayed in Labour hands and they might have taken Norwich North from the Tories, while the Lib Dems may have gained Bedford.

As Peter Snow would have said, "this is only a bit of fun" and we are happy to accept that our assumptions and methodology may not be accurate.

But our little game suggests that the electoral map of the region would be a little different under AV.

Whether that's a good thing or not is what this debate is all about and both sides of the campaign will be fiercely debating the pros and cons for the next two months.

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